Saturday, June 25, 2016

AZGSexit moves forward

As Britain exits the European Union, the Arizona Geological Survey is exiting Arizona state government for a new future as a research and service center at the University of Arizona. We have one year of partial transition funding to become entirely self-supporting from grants and fees for services.

AZGS shut down the retail store on Thursday, emptied out the library of all remaining volumes, and gave away ~25,000 topographic maps in preparation for the physical move that begins on Monday. There is no room in our campus space for these materials and activities.

The Phoenix office assets were moved to the old mining museum today, with volunteers scheduled to arrive July 5 to transfer the library materials from carts and gondolas to the bookshelves we are sending up from Tucson.

[Top, map users pull topo maps from storage shelves. A non-profit organization took all the remaining maps to make them available for outdoor recreation activities. Second from top, Stephanie Mar unloads remaining publications from the library shelves in preparation for dismantling and moving them to Phoenix for storage. Bottom left, most of the library was taken by other libraries, geologists, companies, and interested parties. The bulk of what remained were old technical journals, mining magazines, and out of date references. Bottom right, store manager Nancy Greene finishes packing the store for moving to the Phoenix museum to become the basis of a gift shop-store when that facility is re-opened, perhaps in a year or two.]

This short sighted blunder is absolutely shameful. The citizens of arizona have not been served by the staff that recommended this to the governor and the governor should have had more common sense and understanding of what the survey means to this state. Shameful.